gimme s'more wine in saumur, darls.

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so last weekend we were all bored of visiting museums and decided to take a day trip

to Saumur

its a town 21mins by train outside of Anger's and is also home to a chateau....and dancing horses

but most importantly it is home to the troglodytiques, which are just a fancy french way of saying underground villages

or mole people

haha jk.

what is special though, is that in the caves, lives a special form of wine. sparkling wine to be exact, and interested in all things vine related, we girls, thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to expand our knowledge of the wine making process.

plus get out of angers for the day

so up we went to saumur to a vineyard called Louis de Grenelle, its a cute little establishment off the beaten path that takes about 30mins to walk to by foot.

it was me, kiki, pia, erdina, and tiffany and some german/eastern european/hungarian?/who knows where they were from boys in the tour that day.

we walked down into the caves 2.5km and started the tour with an explanation of the differen't types of chemicals that are used to make wine sparkle and how they are then extracted once the bottle has been closed.

it was cute, and moldy, and we got to play crypt keeper again in the special ceremonies room.

this room has been in the cave since the 1800's when the vineyard was first opened. it even has a bottle of wine from the first batch of wine ever produced for commercial purposes there.
and a giant chair etched into the wall. excellent for playing crypt keeper on....

then there is an upright keg in the middle with theeee biggest wine glass ever created by man.this is the glass the master of ceremonies offers to all involved to taste the years batch.
pretty cute, but i definetly would not like to be down there alone, as during the tour i kept having flashbacks of batcaves and a certain movie...involving bats.

anyway, the cutest part of the ceremonies room was that it had two ways to enter, up a set of stairs or a ramp and etched into the stone of the entry way it said "use them for when you can, and for when you can't" referencing of course the ramp....because after a few drinks we'd all like a ramp to guide us, yes?

so after the tour we got to taste a bunch of different wines....12 in total.
butttt it wasn't your typical wine tasting, normally, or so i've heard, you receive just a little to taste.
but no.
not in france, you receive the whole glass. large and in charge.

they also had apple juice for those who needed it.

after we stumbled our way back to the center of town, we noticed that for the tiny town, Saumur has some big name shops, so if your ever in the pays de la loire, its worth a shopping trip out.

we then went to a cuban resto for dinner, which was gross. and we will never speak of it again.

i should have known better.

then after we hoped the train back to Angers. the next day the girls went shopping in Nantes, but being 1000$ over budget already, i opted for the budget friendly afternoon movie instead.

we met up the next day though at the jardin des plants, my fav little hang out, and had a wonderful last weekend in angers picnic complete with sparkling wine, cheese, and tomatoes.

i bid farewell to my goats too. although, and im not being weird, i think they changed them. those aren't the same goats that use to live there. i think that maybe, there was like a horrible accident involving goat killing smog that suffocated my babies. because those aren't my goats...

the last week has gone by supppper quickly with exams at school and packing and planning and what not but its official.

my time in france is done

much love
k

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